Her Secret
by Burning 'Til There's Dark Blue
Summary: Want to know a secret? She's not who you think she is. She's not in a perfect home, doesn't have a perfect life, but one day she's finally going to be free. And she's going to live without the pain of the past 17 years.


_Don't own TDI Don't own TDI. I just like oneshots_

She sat in solitude again. Her parents were off somewhere doing who knows what, and had left her all alone. Real bright, guys! Leave the manic-depressive surfer alone with a bunch of weapons! She smiled at the thought of her parents coming home stoned to see her sitting on the couch holding a flamethrower. Bridgette laughed, fingering the pocketknife in her hand.

Her laptop was on the ground in front of her. Her email page filled the screen, about three dozen new emails, which she scrolled through in seconds. A bunch of forwards from Courtney, hate letters from Eva, and other useless crap that Gwen, Trent, and Duncan had all sent her. Only one note from Geoff? Where had he disappeared to this time? Bridgette sighed as she closed her laptop and sat up, staring at the sky.

There was a life for her few knew about. Behind the smile she kept on her face, only a few had managed to see behind the shield she kept over her life. They were the few that had stuck with her through all the turmoil.

Trent, for example, just happened to see Bridgette's parents coming home one night, completely stoned and very obviously drunk. They had been driven home by who looked like "Just a Friend", who was covered in tattoos and piercings. Basically an older, crackhead version of Duncan, he had said. He told her later that he could smell the drugs from his front porch, where he had been standing.

Gwen had been the first to realize she was hurting herself. She had seen Bridgette sitting on a dock, stabbing the wood with a pocketknife. After going over to see what was going on, she had caught sight of the cuts on Bridgette's wrists and had just looked at her, somewhat upset, before getting up and walking away.

Duncan and Geoff had both been called over dozens of times after her parents had flipped out for no reason and had started hitting Bridgette. She had locked herself in her room and frantically dialed their phone numbers on the cell phone. They both got over freakishly fast. Geoff had snuck her out of the house while Duncan screamed at Bridgette's parents for a while.

Courtney had been there once, the time when Bridgette's dad stormed into the school, holding a butcher knife. Bridgette had tried to hide, but somehow her dad found her. When the cops came, they found Bridgette hiding behind Courtney and Gwen, while Duncan, Trent, and Geoff were in the process of trying to get the knife away from Bridgette's dad.

Her dad had been arrested that day, but had got out only 4 hours later on parole. He had freaked out that night, and when Bridgette tried to call the two people who could stop him, he had taken her cell phone and crushed it. Bridgette ended up 15 minutes later at Trent's house, covered in cuts and bruises. All her friends managed to show up, except for Duncan, who stormed over to Bridgette's house holding a metal baseball bat, screaming that nobody was going to hurt his friends without facing him first.

Her dad had stumbled out about 5 minutes later with a black eye, 15 missing teeth, a broken left arm and broken right wrist, and marks from a chain around his neck, not to mention various other cuts and bruises. He walked away cursing, and right before getting in the car to leave, threw a rock that had been lying on the ground at Trent's house, barely missing the window where everyone sat by.

Bridgette stood up and pocketed the knife. She quietly made her way over to her backpack, which she dumped out. All her notebooks, papers, and pencils from school covered the floor. She picked up the few things she wouldn't dare leave: her laptop, her journal, the 524 dollars she had managed to salvage over the years, and the photo of her and all her friends that was taken on the island. Quietly, she walked out of her bedroom and to the kitchen. There was pretty much nothing in the pantry she could bring that her parents wouldn't notice was missing, but she took it anyway. She wasn't coming back anyway. Granola bars would be very helpful in that case.

Closing her backpack, she went to the door and slipped on her shoes. As she closed the door, she took one last look at the place where she had been trapped since she was nine.

That was the day that Bridgette's secret life was over.

That was the day she ran away.


End file.
